


Go Ask Alice

by misura



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen, POV Alternating, crossovering treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There are three levels to the Drift.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Ask Alice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



The sound of Arthur's helmet hitting the floor is as loud as a gunshot; it bounces a few times before it rolls away, completely unharmed, of course; it's been designed to withstand far great forces, far worse catastrophes than an aborted Drift.

Eames considers walking over and picking it up by way of an excuse to get close enough to hear what Arthur's saying to Cobb, what Cobb's saying in return.

As if he can't guess.

 

There are three levels to the Drift.

Scientists have numbered them, but pilots refer to them as Heaven, Hell and Limbo, as that is what they are, more or less.

Heaven is the first level, where time moves four times as slow as in the real world. Where you've got four seconds to make one-second decisions; where you know that, if you hit a Kaiju with a missile going 40 mph, in the real world, it'll hit at 160 mph.

Where you know that, if you're going to be dead in an hour, it will take you four hours to die, instead.

(Eames has never been there, but he's heard the stories. He _knows_.)

 

"Well, shit," Arthur says. It's mild, compared to what most people would say.

Cobb says nothing. He's embarrassed (maybe); he's tired (probable); he's as frustrated as Arthur is (impossible). He's wishing he was still in the Drift (definitely), except that Drifting is a two-man job (or a two-woman, or a man-and-woman job, but Arthur's really not in the mood to be that all inclusive right now) and Arthur knows what fucking happens when you go off chasing RABITs, or when you let your co-pilot go off chasing RABITs.

"You rang?" Eames says, and Arthur wants to grin and tell him to piss off at the same time.

Arthur's a practical guy by nature, though, and Eames is carrying Arthur's helmet. He'll leave if Arthur tells him to leave - with the helmet. "Mr Eames." He holds out his hands; Eames surrenders the helmet.

"Thanks." Cobb says it, not Arthur.

"Bit of trouble, was there?" Eames asks casually. Like he's not going to talk about how mediocre pilots with no imagination are damaging the reputation of the Jaeger program; like he's not staring down his nose at Cobb and Arthur both right now.

 _Just someone's dead wife,_ Arthur thinks, but doesn't say out loud. Cobb winces a little; he's no longer in Arthur's mind, but apparently, he still caught that one. Arthur can't bring himself to care.

_Same old fucking story._

 

Hell is the second level of the Drift, and it's not a good place to be. Hell _burns_.

Still, time moves sixteen times faster there, so if you need a small rocket to make a big impact, Hell is where you go, even though you know that if you stay for longer than a minute, there's a 60% chance you'll come out with severe neural damage.

All good pilots have gone to Hell once or twice. When they needed to; when they wanted to see what it was like. When they were up against a Category Delta and they had no other choice.

All _great_ pilots go to Hell about once a week.

 

"She's there," Dom says. He knows that Arthur doesn't believe this, that Arthur doesn't believe in much of anything, nowadays, except, for some reason, Dom's ability to pilot a Jaeger and Eames's inability to stick to a plan. "I saw her - we both did. Mal is - "

"Dead."

"Well, yes," Dom says, because he's not denying _that_. He's been convicted of her murder; he knows better than anyone that Mal is no longer what people would call _alive_. That doesn't mean she can't still exist somewhere else, linger on some other plane of existence.

"It's a memory," Arthur says. "A figment of your imagination," which is not, Dom would like to point out, the same as a memory at all.

"She's real." Dom emphasizes the personal pronoun. _She_ , not _it_. "She's waiting for me. For us." Arthur grimaces. "No, wait. Think about it." Dom has, for a long time. "There's so many things we don't know - about the Kaiju. About the Breach."

"I'm not listening to this," Arthur says, but it's not _I'm not going to Drift with you anymore_ , so Dom knows it's all right.

"Mal's smart," Dom says. "I think she knows something. I think she wants to tell me. I think that's why she keeps showing up."

Something flashes in Arthur's eyes. "If that had been real back there, instead of a simulation, we'd both be dead now. Or worse."

There's about a dozen pilots in the Shatterdome's medical bay who will probably never pilot again, or get up again, or talk again. They're alive, more or less. They're _aware_ , according to Yusuf.

And if anyone ever figures out a way to Drift all the way down to Limbo, and then up again, they might tell people what Limbo's actually like.

(Or not. Dom's heard it theorized both ways, but Limbo as a place beyond both Heaven and Hell, where the not-dead go while they wait to die, sounds plausible enough to him.)

 

Two-hundred-and-fifty-six seconds to one in the real word.

Limbo is a dream, a myth, a legend, except that it's real - there's a digital recording of a Jaeger, blurring as it moves even when the recording is played frame by frame.

Gottlieb's theorem proves that limbo is real; what's left of Yukon Jack proves that it is a extremely dangerous level of Drift to pilot in. (Arguably, the continued existence of Shanghai proves that sometimes, it's worth it.)

 

Arthur doesn't believe in dead people.

Mal was a beautiful, intelligent woman; one of the best pilots Arthur's ever met and didn't dislike at first sight for being a cocky, arrogant bastard, and now she's dead, and that's not good, but that's life.

"Going to hit the showers?" Eames, of course. "Need someone to scrub your back?"

There's a _darling_ lingering in the air, but Eames doesn't say it out loud. He's learning where Arthur's buttons are, and when not to push them, and if this were a war, Arthur supposes he should worry about that and do some intelligence gathering of his own.

It _is_ a war, of course, but it's him and Eames and the rest of humanity against the Kaiju, and Arthur doesn't have the energy that being paranoid requires. He knows Eames is cocky and arrogant and possibly as great a pilot as he thinks he is.

He knows Eames is very good at scrubbing other people's backs and at catching them when they slip on a bit of soap that's only on the floor because Eames spilled it there. He knows Eames is a little grumpy and a little slow in the morning, except when he's not.

He knows how Eames likes his coffee, and his tea, and that Eames is an incorrigible romantic at heart, who'd probably enjoy long, moonlit strolls on the beach and who'd pick a Celine Dion song if they ever were to go to a karaoke bar. (They're not. Not _ever_.)

"Why not?"


End file.
